Version 7.2 Breaks 3rd Party Support Module Usage

http://docs.whmcs.com/Support_Center

The new Search Engine Friendly URLS introduced in 7.2 ignore the settings under General Settings > Support > Support Module

None of the options of Full Friendly Rewrite, Friendly index.php or Basic URLs work anymore.

Under Basic URLs it generates a link like index.php?rp=/knowledgebase but a Support Module required /knowledgebase.php

How does this kind thing make its way into a public release?! How do we go about getting WHMCS working with a Support Module again?

Yesterday I read the changelog, and somewhere it says they removed the deprecated SEO urls setting from the admin side. I was not sure if they mean the setting or the whole function because that would be again a big, big downgrade....

It seems they maybe removed the feature all together?

If this is correct, this is a disaster. I recently changed all my installation to use that SEO friendly url scheme and this would break all my site, modules, templates, etc. In particular, this is required for KB friendly urls because they use the title for each url which I also have in multiple languages, so each KD article has its own language and is very Google friendly. If they removed this SEO feature, I may never be able to upgrade to 7.2 at all.

I hope this is not true and they didn't actually removed that feature that actives the nice naming url's instead of ID numbers.

In case you want to confirm this:

http://docs.whmcs.com/Changelog:WHMCS_V7.2

CORE-11213 - Remove obsolete "KB SEO Friendly URLs" option from General Settings >> Support tab

http://docs.whmcs.com/Friendly_URLs

Damo, you may need to go to the advanced option to tweak .htaccess to handle your support module path correctly...

yggdrasil, the KB SEO option will have got removed because Friendly_URLs supersedes it and is site-wide and not just for kb...

I think the Full Friendly Rewrite option should work for you in terms of knowledgebase...

knowledgebase/1/Cloud-Hosting.html

but like Damo might possible require tweaking if it's not exactly the same as the old KB SEO method.

http://docs.whmcs.com/Friendly_URLs

 

Damo, you may need to go to the advanced option to tweak .htaccess to handle your support module path correctly...

 

yggdrasil, the KB SEO option will have got removed because Friendly_URLs supersedes it and is site-wide and not just for kb...

I think the Full Friendly Rewrite option should work for you in terms of knowledgebase...

 

knowledgebase/1/Cloud-Hosting.html

 

but like Damo might possible require tweaking if it's not exactly the same as the old KB SEO method.

So the setting was just moved in the GUI settings but is still here?

I know the friendly SEO works actually with the .htaccess rules and was a site-wide setting. I have fairly more complex rules, the provided ones by WHMCS didn't work for me since at least version 5, but I managed to fix it by using custom rules, and some hook/modules hacks to correctly detect and send the user to the correct path.

But those rules still require the WHMCS SEO setting to be ON from the Admin side on my current installation. If I turn that off, my full rules stop working as they depend on the KB and other things to use the friendly names, which are the SEO Smarty variable in WHMCS templates. So that setting basically instructs WHMCS to use those URLs in the templates which I need.

The page you pointed out seems like the features are still here but are more advanced and sophisticated now. Nice. Strangely I never saw that mentioned anywhere in the new version release.

Thanks Brian! I don't know what rules need to be used to have it like it was. I have tried all three settings and none of them work.

Hi Ed,

That's not true. The Fully Friendly Rewrite option turns the links to /announcements and /knowledgebase instead of /announcements.php and /knowledgebase.php It seems that the .php is required for the 3rd part module to be linked in properly.

Hi Ed,

 

That's not true. The Fully Friendly Rewrite option turns the links to /announcements and /knowledgebase instead of /announcements.php and /knowledgebase.php It seems that the .php is required for the 3rd part module to be linked in properly.

That is a simple .htaccess rule that removes the extension on .php files. Both should work fine on your site, so it doesn't really matter if its /knowledgebase or /knowledgebase.php (both are the same)

Try, and both should be working. If /knowledgebase alone does not work, check your .htaccess file, that is where you actually do all the rewrite and remove the extension on files. The setting in WHMCS only tells templates to use that format instead.

But if its working, or not working, on your site. That is exclusively based on your .htaccess rules you have installed.

I had a similar issue on testing the beta. It wasn't until I noticed you had to click the small recycle icon next to the dropdown selecting the rewrite method that it worked. In the beta at least it wasn't writing the .htaccess file when you saved the settings, only when you clicked the icon.

I don't know if they fixed this as the .htaccess was already in place when I upgraded my test environment to 7.2.1.

This is yet another disaster in 7.2.1 AAAARGH

I've tried all 3 settings and all are a mess

I go to knowledgebase from the home page and it works. I view an article and it works. I then click to go back the site home page and the url generated is /index.php/knowledgebase/index.php (obviously wrong)

When I change it to either of the other settings, and click the refresh to change it, the knowledgebase articles never show up.

Ironically, if I go to google and do a search for specific kb articles, google has them in the old format

knowledgebase.php?action=displayarticle&id=201

and they work. I just can't get the thing to work directly on my site. Anyone help? Please?

This is yet another disaster in 7.2.1 AAAARGH

I've tried all 3 settings and all are a mess

I go to knowledgebase from the home page and it works. I view an article and it works. I then click to go back the site home page and the url generated is /index.php/knowledgebase/index.php (obviously wrong)

perhaps the menu is hard-coded to clients/index.php ? perhaps just set it to clients/

the acid test for something like this is always to switch back to Six - if it works with Six, but not your custom, then you know it's an issue with the custom theme.

additionally, i'm wondering if you've got .htaccess code somewhere adding index.php to the root of folder URLs.

When I change it to either of the other settings, and click the refresh to change it, the knowledgebase articles never show up.

Ironically, if I go to google and do a search for specific kb articles, google has them in the old format

knowledgebase.php?action=displayarticle&id=201

and they work. I just can't get the thing to work directly on my site. Anyone help? Please?

I noticed the old way of accessing the articles worked too during the beta...

i'm not seeing anything obviously wrong failing with the site - apart from the link to your most popular articles (103) doesn't work... but the article is definitely there... perhaps that can be fixed by one of the hotfixes....

https://forum.whmcs.com/showthread.php?129326-CORE-11298-Call-to-a-member-function-isHidden()-on-null-Error-On-Knowledgebase

Actually, the old way will always work.

Even with the rewrite rules and the settings turned on with WHMCS. That is because those are actually the real URL's. The rewrite rules is just a visual trick (like hiding index, or the .php extension)

Internally the server is still loading the KB by ID's. Google is still indexing them because you probably have them linked like that somewhere.

That is a simple .htaccess rule that removes the extension on .php files. Both should work fine on your site, so it doesn't really matter if its /knowledgebase or /knowledgebase.php (both are the same)

 

Try, and both should be working. If /knowledgebase alone does not work, check your .htaccess file, that is where you actually do all the rewrite and remove the extension on files. The setting in WHMCS only tells templates to use that format instead.

 

But if its working, or not working, on your site. That is exclusively based on your .htaccess rules you have installed.

I understand the changes to the htaccess rules set by WHMCS are causing the issue. It is not a case of it just removing the extension. For the third party support module to work it appears that the links must go to /knowledgebase.php not /knowledgebase or /index.php?rp=/knowledgebase etc.

To be clear this issue is when using a 3rd Party Support module (as properly configured within WHMCS). This latest version of WHMCS seems to ignore it completely and instead show the internal knowledge base.

Good to know that the 'old way' will still always work, but good LORD, the KB and SEO garbage in 7.2.x is utterly atrocious. WHY 'fix' what wasn't 'broken', eh?

The 'old way' doesn't work without modifying templates and the KB search that appears on the client area home page doesn't work. Advice from WHMCS was to contact the 3rd party and get them to update and the advice from the 3rd party was to modify templates.